


i’m out of touch , i’m out of love

by honeykaspbrak



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: :((, ANGST!!, Bisexual Carl Gallagher, Canon Divergent, Carl-centric, Crying, Drug Use, Gen, He’s got some PTSD symptoms, Juvie fucked him up, M/M, Mental Illness, Mentions of Sex, Miscarriage, Panic Attacks, Underage Drinking, anxious + depressed carl, carl is just a baby and no one remembers that, carl’s POV, carl’s internal monologue, carl’s juvie stint, every carl I write is bi okay, he needs sum love, ian and Mandy are my favorite friends, lonely boy :(, messy rambling basically, poor south side kids, sadness ;(, set after carl gets out of juvie but doesn’t really follow the plot/timing, you know I had to put mands in here I miss her so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 18:36:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15225405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeykaspbrak/pseuds/honeykaspbrak
Summary: it wasn’t fine, but that’s fine. carl isn’t stupid. he knows that’s how it has to be, right? chin up, smile on the face, hug your siblings, fall apart in the shower when everyone else in the house is asleep. everyone here has too much to deal with already and no one had totellhim that.or: a post-juvie carl gallagher character study. what if he was hiding things? he’s just a kid, after all.





	i’m out of touch , i’m out of love

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: miscarriage and blood. be safe everyone!
> 
> GOD all i write about is carl. we get it, kid, you love him to death. anyways, i hope you guys aren’t sick of my angsty-ass carl yet, because this probably isn’t the last you’ll hear from him.

carl isn’t _stupid._ like, he’s known ian was gay for as long as he can remember. even before he had a word for it he knew ian liked other boys. like the ones he’d hang around at school, or that kid from ROTC training who used to come to the house for sleepovers that lip would shuffle carl out of their bedroom for. or mickey milkovich, as if everyone hasn’t _known_ they’ve been fucking for upwards of five years. anyways, the point is, no one had to tell carl that ian was gay. just like no one had to tell him that monica was crazy, that lip was a drunk, that taking care of him and his siblings was running fiona into the ground. no one had to tell him any of that. 

carl is fourteen now, and feels messed up in his own skin. the gallagher house is too small for all of them and he still feels the time in juvie all over his chest and hands. it wakes him up, sweaty and panicking in the middle of the night, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes and vision blurring into fuzzy blackness. he hasn’t told anyone about that, even when the shaking got bad enough one early, sweltering morning that he had to open the window over ian’s bed and vomit out of it into the front yard. god. 

he might not know very much, but he knows being fucked up. this family teaches you that well enough. he knows there’s something wrong inside his head, a switch that juvenile detention and fearing for his life and missing his family so much that it felt like a knife to the gut flipped. fiona held out her arms and asked him how it was, if everything was okay, when he walked through the door, and he lied to her. _it was good, it was fine, easier than i thought it would be, really_. 

it wasn’t fine, but that’s fine. carl isn’t stupid. he knows that’s how it has to be, right? chin up, smile on the face, hug your siblings, fall apart in the shower when everyone else in the house is asleep. everyone here has too much to deal with already and no one had to _tell_ him that. 

the point of it all, carl guesses, is that the south side teaches you to pick up things without hearing them said aloud. it’s a survival tactic. so when ian sat down at the end of carl’s bed two years ago and took the sheathed knife he was spinning out of his hands and said _”you know mickey is, like, my boyfriend, right?”_ carl just grinned and nodded and ian gave him a noogie. yeah, he knew. 

but it seems like, maybe, no one has picked up anything going on with carl. which, really, is fine, because he doesn’t want to fucking talk about it. but there’s another edge of him that sees that they’re all too busy with their own things to even really speak to him, and there’s another edge that’s hurt by that. 

lip is away at college, and they talk on the phone one wednesday afternoon as carl walks home from school.

_“hey, c!”_

_“hi! what’s up?”_

_“homework. physics is kicking my ass, man. oh, hey, how’s debbie? you know, fi said she was having a hard time with some girls at school.”_

and that’s it, really. lip isn’t going to ask how he is. which is kind of always how it is. carl is expendable. fiona calls it _stable_ , as in, carl can take care of himself well enough. he isn’t ian, running away to the army, or debbie, boy-crazy and dramatic. so carl is pushed to the side, and he doesn’t even mind except for when he does.

carl gets back into the routine of home, slowly, and he’s starting to sleep though the night better, isn’t crying helplessly in the bathroom so often, doesn’t have to drink quite as much to feel normal. so things are getting better, until, out of the blue, they get worse. 

it’s late nighttime, after eleven, probably, when ian kicks the front door open. carl is sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a beer and staring at the wall, not thinking, and then ian bursts in, yelling, carrying mandy milkovich bridal-style in his arms. 

“carl, clear the table.” ian yells in this scary, unfamiliar voice, and a side effect of a year in juvie is that carl’s brain stops up whenever someone raises their voice at him. he opens and closes his mouth, feels his heartbeat speed up all anxious. he can’t take this all in, can’t process it quickly enough. mandy has one arm around ian’s neck and one hand pressed to her stomach, and she’s crying, and is that _blood_ on ian’s shirt? _”carl!”_ ian half hollers, eyes wide and wild. 

carl snaps into movement because he has no choice not to, chest crushingly restricted as he gathers the bottles and dishes from the table, dumps them on the counter, sweeps the papers and liam’s toys onto the kitchen floor. mandy is crying, sobbing, but it’s as if carl is hearing it from miles and miles away. he’s cold and foggy.

“ian?” he asks, hating how small his voice sounds. carl isn’t stupid. he doesn’t need someone to tell him that mandy is most likely miscarrying on their kitchen table, where ian has laid her out and is now leaning over her, brushing long strands of dark hair out of her sweating, contorted face. carl can’t take his eyes off the small pool of blood that’s forming between mandy’s thighs.

“okay, mands, breathe. breathe, the ambulance is on its way.” 

“y-you called an ambulance?” carl didn’t know this kind of thing warranted an ambulance. ian doesn’t even look over at him. it’s as if he’s invisible and his voice is silent, nothing more than a draft whistling though the kitchen.

“ow, ow, ian, fuck. it hurts.” mandy is whimpering, eyes screwed shut, and carl feels like he shouldn’t be looking at her. he wants to stop looking at her, can’t. 

“it’s okay, it’s okay, love. breathe.” ian’s voice as he comforts her is so gentle, but carl can hear the sour fear at the underbelly. carl is trembling, rooted to the floor on unsteady legs. 

it’s the blood, he thinks. it’s the suddenly overpowering memory of carl’s cellmate waking him up with screams, a shiv to the chest spurting blood that carl can still feel on his hands after all these months. horribly, horribly warm and thick, the coppery stench of it lingering in his nose and mouth for weeks after it was scrubbed off the concrete floor. 

_”ian.”_ carl needs to get out of here. “ian-” carl’s brother whirls around, face a mask of terror and pain.

“fuck _off_ , carl! for one minute! she needs help, okay, and i can’t fucking focus when you’re _talking_ , jesus.”

carl hears mandy say, barely audibly, “ian, c’mon”, but he’s already halfway up the stairs with his ears ringing and eyes flooding and hot, hot blood sweeping over his hands. 

fiona finds him on the floor in the bathroom, sweating through his clothes and tearing his fingers through his hair like he’ll fly apart if he stops. she holds her arms out and asks him how he is, if everything is okay, and he lies to her.

but for a minute she thinks she’ll put her hands on his cheeks and look into his eyes and see what’s wrong and somehow she’ll fix it. instead she only ruffles his hair and tells him she’s going to the hospital with debbie to make sure mandy is alright, and does he want to come? he shakes his head. carl isn’t stupid. he doesn’t need anyone to tell him that he is the expendable one in the family. 

carl is fourteen now, messed up in his own skin but old enough to know that he isn’t allowed to be.

**Author's Note:**

> have i mentioned that comments, like..... sustain me ?? ;)


End file.
